One person dominated Prime Minister’s Questions, and it wasn’t Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. It was Kemi Badenoch, who appears to be going deeper into her battle with former Post Office chair Henry Staunton. Starmer decided to deepen the row further today, while Sunak notably didn’t make all that much effort to defend Badenoch beyond what was absolutely necessary.

The Labour leader made the focus of his questions about Badenoch, only widening it to the compensation payments for victims of the infected blood scandal towards the end. He asked:

Would the Prime Minister be prepared personally to repeat the allegation made by his Business Secretary that the former chair of the Post Office is lying when he says he was told to go slow on compensation for postmasters and limp to the next election?

Sunak did not, instead telling the Commons that Badenoch:

asked Henry Staunton to step down after serious concerns were raised, she set out the reasons for this and full background in the house earlier this week, but importantly we have also taken unprecedented steps to ensure that victims of the Horizon scandal do receive compensation as swiftly as possible and in full.

Starmer pursued the issue, pointing to a note released by Staunton that ‘appears to directly contradict’ Badenoch’s denial about delaying compensation. He added:

I appreciate the Business Secretary in a tricky position, but will he commit to investigating this matter properly? Including whether that categorical statement was correct, and why rather than taking those accusations seriously she accused a whistleblower of lying?

Sunak stuck to the ‘serious concerns’ point and listed what the government is doing for the victims of the scandal, not engaging with the question itself.

Even Sunak seems a bit wary of the potency of his minister

Starmer asked again for the investigation, arguing that one of the features of this miscarriage is that where concerns have been raised, they’ve been pushed aside. He wanted Sunak to tell him what government ministers knew about an investigation into whether Post Office branch accounts could be altered which was suddenly stopped in 2016. The exchanges continued, with Sunak then complaining that Starmer hadn’t raised the scandal with him in the past either, and Starmer asking whether the government was ‘limping towards the election’ on infected blood compensation too. Sunak’s response to that was that the government would respond as soon as expert advice comes back on the inquiry’s compensation recommendations.

Badenoch’s troubles continued into the points of order immediately after the session, with shadow leader of the Commons Lucy Powell asking for clarification about Badenoch’s comments on Monday, and Labour backbencher Liam Byrne complaining that Badenoch had said trade talks with Canada were still happening when Canada had contradicted this. It’s striking that Labour now seems to see her as being worthy of the same amount of effort they put into attacking the Prime Minister himself – and that even Sunak seems a bit wary of the potency of his minister.